There’s a loss of energy in grief, a sadness that is heavy and weighs you down. I’m not at all sure that writing helps, but writing for me is the most personal act and wherever I am, my writing is there, too.
Over at Ethical ELA, Shaun Ingalls posted a prompt inspired by Alicia Mountain’s “Drift” inviting us to re-encounter something with a new perspective.
I Hold an Acorn
in my hand in a field of clover.
Am I a child now? Walking with sun bright in my eyes as it rises above the live oaks?
It is spring, to be sure, a time of resurrection. Yet you are not here.
I cannot call you or text (You never learned how to text), so I stand in the field, hold the acorn lift it to smell my childhood, like the scent of the Paschal candle, anointing to save, to savor.
I am here. You are not.
Margaret Simon, draft
Grandmother oak in the morning. Photo by Margaret Simon
The Kidlit Progressive Poem is nearly complete. You can follow its progress with the schedule on the side bar. Karen has the next to last line today.
If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we are apart, I’ll always be with you.
A.A.Milne
Today’s photo prompt appeared in my Facebook feed. Our school librarian has a young daughter who is a dancer. They recently posed these photos for her dance teacher. Melissa told me that this one is her daughter with her best friend. It made me think of how important friends can be in this dance of life. Leave a small poem in the comments. Then comment on others with encouraging words. Thanks for stopping by.
Beach Dancers, by dance instructor Delannie Delcambre
Dance for the ocean Speak for the earth Sing for the sky Write for who you long to be.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
My friend and fellow writing group member Linda Mitchell led the writing prompt for #verselove at Ethical ELA yesterday. She directed us to use the steps in the scientific method to craft a poem. As many of you know, my father died on Friday morning. If you follow my blog, I’m afraid there is nothing else so pressing on my mind than this and the care for my mother. Writing is healing for me.
A Place at the Table
You could make this place beautiful. Can you float a flower in the vase and call it home? Flowers, a white cat, a black dog, coffee brewing, what could be missing? The empty seat at the table is cold, lonely. I move over, sit in his chair, open the last book he was reading. Time will fill the space at the table, even in the midst of absence. There will be beauty again.
The Kidlit Progressive Poem is stopping here today. It’s been on a long journey and now we are turning toward home. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the participants who without much guidance just kept this poem going and growing.
The last stop was with Kevin Hodgson at Kevin’s Meandering Mind. Here is the poem so far with my line added in italics.
Where they were going, there were no maps.
Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today.
Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!
We have to go back. I forgot something.
But it’s spring, and the world is puddle-wonderful,
so we’ll whistle and dance and set off on our way.
Come with me, and you’ll be in a land of pure imagination.
Wherever you go, take your hopes, pack your dreams, and never forget –
it is on our journeys that discoveries are made.
And then it was time for singing.
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain, paint with all the colors of the wind, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky?
Suddenly, they stopped and realized they weren’t the only ones singing.
Listen, a chattering of monkeys! Let’s smell the dawn and taste the moonlight, we’ll watch it all spread out before us. The moon is slicing through the sky. We whisper to the tree, tap on the trunk, imagine it feeling our sound. Clouds of blue-winged swallows, rain from up the mountains,
Green growing all around, and the cool splash of the fountain.
If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden,
a bright, secret, quiet place, and rather sad; and they stepped out into the middle of it.
Their minds’ libraries and lightning bugs led them on.
The darkwood sings, the elderhist blooms, the sky lightens; listen and you will find your way home.
The night sky would soon be painted, stars gleaming overhead, a beautiful wild curtain closing on the day.
Mud and dusk, nettles and sky – time to cycle home in the dark.
There are no wrong roads to anywhere
I am away from home staying with my mother. My father is in hospice care in the hospital after a stroke ten days ago. This liminal time has been a blessing in many ways. I am listening to my mother play the piano as I write this. She and Dad are big Leonard Cohen fans. My father gave her a picture book of “Dance Me to the End of Love” illustrated by Matisse. I am not sure my line makes sense with the poem, but I also know that poetry is a safe place and a place of mystery. So I’m just going with it.
lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
1. The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories, by Emily Winfield Martin 2. The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien 3. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame 4. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech 5. inspired by “[in Just-]” by E. E. Cummings 6. “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 7. Maybe by Kobi Yamada 8. Sarah, Plain, and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan 9. inspired by Disney songs “A Whole New World” from Aladdin and “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas 10. The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor 11. adapted from Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman 12. adapted from The Magical Imperfect by Chris Baron 13. adapted from On the Same Day in March by Marilyn Singer 14. adapted from a line in Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson 15. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 16. Prince Caspian by CS Lewis 17. The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera 18. Kate DiCamillo’s The Beatryce Prophecy 19. The Keeper of Wild Words by Brooke Smith 20. Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv 21. ThePhantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster 22. Dance Me to the End of Love by Leonard Cohen
This is a difficult time. My father had a stroke last week and is not recovering in the earthly sense. We’ve held holy vigil with him. It’s holy, healing, and horrible all at the same time. This photo is my mother and father’s hands.
I wrote this poem after Lucille Clifton from an Ethical ELA prompt. I know that this is a universal experience for some. Write a small poem in the comments and respond to other poets.
Wishes for Dad
i wish for peace and a place to write his thoughts on a cloud floating above all this madness of machines pumping oxygen taking pulse counting heartbeats
i wish for the smell of an open field of wildflowers where he can run free
i wish i wish i wish i could take the cup of suffering away.
And here is today’s new line from poet Janet Clare Fagal, a blogless soul who posts on Facebook as Janet Clare and whose poems can be found in a variety of anthologies (pictured below), and online at nlapw.org. If you are not a Facebook friend, please send Janet a request if you would like to connect!
I am happy to be participating once again in the Poetry Friday Progressive Poem! Thanks to Margaret for hosting me this year.
Such an adventure we have begun. I tried a little formatting to get a feel for the bones of our poem, but please feel free to try your own version as we move along down the path! For my line, I found one from Neil Gaiman, and using my poetic license, I adapted/edited the line to make it work a bit better for the poem. I am eager to pass the poem to my friend Jone Rush MacCulloch!
Don’t we all love the adventure of April in this wonderfully creative Blogosphere of Kidlitosphere poets and writers! I am so glad you started this Progressive Poem, Irene, I look forward to it every April.
Where they were going, there were no maps.
Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not Today.
Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!
We have to go back. I forgot something.
But it’s spring, and the world is puddle-wonderful, so we’ll whistle and dance and set off on our way.
Come with me, and you’ll be in a land of pure imagination.
Wherever you go, take your hopes, pack your dreams, and never forget – it is on our journeys that discoveries are made.
And then it was time for singing.
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain, paint with all the colors of the wind, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky?
Suddenly, they stopped and realized they weren’t the only ones singing.
(Now for my addition! An adapted line from Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman.)
Listen, a chattering of monkeys! Let’s smell the dawn and taste the moonlight, we’ll watch it all spread out before us.
Lines 1 -11, poet and where they are from:
Irene (The Imaginaries)
Donna (The Hobbit)
Catherine F. (The Wind in The Willows)
Mary Lee (Walk Two Moons)
Buffy Silverman (a bit from e.e. cummings)
Linda Mitchell (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Kim Johnson (from Maybe by Kobi Yamada)
Rose Cappelli (Sarah, Plain and Tall)
Carol Varsalona (Disney Songs)
Linda Baie (The Other Way to Listen.)
Janet Clare Fagal (line adaptation from Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman)
It’s festival season and most of them are back from a long Covid break. All week I introduced different poetry forms to my students. They could choose their own topics. Coincidentally two chose to write about upcoming festivals using the dodoitsu form. Dodoitsu is a Japanese form that uses the syllable count of 7,7,7,5. Avalyn, 2nd grade, wrote about the Lao New Year Festival. Avalyn’s family belongs to the Buddhist Temple located in Coteau, a suburb of New Iberia. In the 70’s Laotian immigrants were aided by Catholic Services to purchase land to build a temple. Every year around Easter, the community celebrates the Lao New Year. Avalyn is looking forward to it with enthusiasm. She wrote a cherita here. I’m sharing her dodoitsu.
The Spanish Festival queen is a substitute teacher at our school, so she and her cohort visited the school to promote the Spanish Festival happening this weekend in New Iberia. This beautiful crocheted canopy is on display downtown.
Crochet Canopy in downtown New Iberia
Chloe was prompted by the queen’s visit to write her dodoitsu about the Spanish festival.
I met Allan Wolf years ago when he visited and presented in our area. He’s incredibly entertaining in real life. He is also one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. So when an opportunity appeared to get an ARC of his latest book of poems, along with an interview, I jumped at it.
Behold our Magical Garden is full of poems that take us into a school garden. You can jump in without getting dirty. The poems are lyrical, funny, and informative. They beg to be read aloud. Behold Our Magical Garden was released on March 8. Please enjoy this delightful interview with Allan.
Allan Wolf is a member of the species Poemo sapien. He often vocalizes in verse from atop chairs. He spends many hours alone sitting at his nest using his imagination to make things. Although he is 59 years old and 5’8” in height, he imagines himself much younger and much taller. He is a writer of poetry, novels, and picture books, and a serious believer in the healing powers of poetry. His latest collection of poems is Behold Our Magical Garden: Poems Fresh from a School Garden, illustrated by Daniel Duncan.
What inspires your writing?
Reading is a big inspiration. Listening to music. Watching performances of all kinds. Observing and experiencing any creative expression that resonates and moves me. While I certainly am a writer, I am more specifically a creator. I have an urge to create. We all have these urges to create life from the clay of our imaginations. And in that respect, we are all amateur gods. Writing and poetry is my default medium.
Why poetry?
Since I first discovered rhythm when I was four years old (I remember it as if it was yesterday!), my thought process has lent itself well to poetry, metaphorical thought, rhythms, rhymes, music, story. And most importantly, my brain is something of a non-linear array of constellations of thought bubbles, with observations flying in and out, unbidden as birds.
Words give a poem sense, while the space between the words give it resonance. Poets can arrange words based on craft, style, and clarity, just as prose writers do. But poets don’t have to stop there. Poets can arrange words based on prescribed patterns . . . or not. Poets can even arrange words wherever the words instruct them too. Space is key. Space between words. Space between lines. You can even remove a word, like you would remove a superfluous wisdom tooth. Line-breaks can be purposefully clunky or smooth. When a line breaks, the words turn. The poem’s rhythm may also turn. The poem’s pace may turn as well. The reader’s eyes, heartbeat, and attention all turn. (Bonus Fact: The word “verse” comes from the Latin, verso, to turn.)
The poet chooses
where
the lines break.
Three things you love?
One) I love juggling (just juggling balls, not clubs, or rubber chickens, or chainsaws! Well, maybe I would love to juggle rubber chickens. That would be really funny!)
Two) I love making music, playing the guitar and the drums, singing, and making up songs.
Three) I love being an author of books! There is such a feeling of closure to have your thoughts and ideas and words and revelations enshrined within a book that is widely available to all. It is a sense of relief, that my words will continue to live and to speak, long after I’ve stopped doing either one.
Oh and, Four) Puppets! Let’s not forget puppets. I love puppets.
During the pandemic, how did you keep creating?
Like many of my writing colleagues, I was surprised how hard it was to keep creating new work, even with two years of mandatory “free time.” I had already been reassessing my work, even before the pandemic. At that time the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements were already in full swing. As a white male writer, I felt like it was more a time to listen than to speak. Then the pandemic, with its forced stay-at-home quarantine, provided the necessary Petri dish to amplify the whole conversation. During that time, I temporarily set aside my most pressing novel, the one I’m back at work on now. It has taken me all this time away from it to reassess what I was trying to say. So much has changed. Meanwhile, throughout my writer’s block, I was actually writing poetry and picture books, which can be a little easier to carry around in your head without going nuts. I also made a lot of videos and I organized my private journals (which I’ve been keeping since I was 12 years old).
What are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of my wife and my children, Simon, Ethan, and James. As for writing, it’s hard to say. I’m proud of the Iceberg character/narrator in The Watch that Ends the Night. That character’s voice is written in iambic pentameter that gradually melts to tetrameter, trimeter, dimeter, and finally, monometer. The Iceberg’s last two spoken words, “I am,” are actually an iamb!
Do you have a writing activity to pass along? (I’d like to challenge my readers and my students to respond.)
What’s In a Name?
ONE) Begin by generating a list of all the “names” you are known by. General Names, like son, daughter, best friend, hero, helper, athlete, or alchemist. And Specific Names like Elizabeth, LaQuesha, Darius, or David. And Nicknames like Doodle, Tutu, Junior, or Jack.
TWO) Choose one example from your list. Using informal prose write “the story of your name.”
THREE) After you’re done, circle (or highlight) five to ten words or phrases that seem integral to your story. Next, use those chosen words or phrases as the building blocks of a poem.
Note to readers: If you do Allan’s challenge, add your poem to this padlet.
In a tiny seedling, the size of a mustard seed, God’s love is hiding, germinating, taking time. I will come back to myself. I know this. But maybe not today.
I need to give myself grace.
Yesterday I got an email from a friend who knows that my One Little Word is Enough. She shared Seth Godin’s blog.
And maybe it’s enough To feel sufficient, to be satisfied with what we have: Chisoku in Japanese.
Of course, by some measures, there’s never enough. We can always come up with a reason why more is better, or better is better, or new is better or different is better.
Enough becomes a choice, not a measure of science.
The essence of choice is that it belongs to each of us. And if you decide you have enough, then you do.
And with that choice comes a remarkable sort of freedom. The freedom to be still, to become aware and to stop hiding from the living that’s yet to be done.
This concept of enough challenges me to make a choice. A choice to be OK when things are not.
The words from the hymn “I Bind Unto Myself Today” are words of commitment, traditionally sung at ordinations and on All Saints Day. The chorus can be like a chant, a meditation:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I pray this day that I can claim this comforting chant, resolve to accept what things I cannot change, and be ready to move forward in peace.
I live on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. I love teaching, poetry, my dog Charlie, my three daughters, and dancing with my husband. This space is where I capture my thoughts, share my insights, and make connections with the world. Welcome! Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 
